Natividad

The nativity at St. Dismas Catholic Church was flooded in soft rays of light that reflected gently off the stone cheekbones of the reverent. The lights from the arched ceiling poured down with a dull golden luster and touched the heads of the wise men, the donkey, the cow, an ox, and Joseph and Mary. The straw looked like strands of gold lace crisscrossing the floor of the otherwise humdrum apse, the oval red-carpeted centerpiece of the sanctuary. Mary’s porcelain face was faded, her lips rose-colored, cracked and peeled paint made her look like a woman after a hard night of drinking. She was presumed to be in perpetual euphoria ― that of a new mother on her knees beside her child looking down upon him through large almond-shaped dark eyes. She had given the world the greatest gift it would receive. The church couldn’t afford to give her a new face and Father Margoles refused to replace her with a cheaper, albeit new, plastic representation for she was all the church had known and it would be a betrayal of sorts. Plastic seemed wrong to him. Like artificial sweeteners in the pink packets of the diner. The figures were in such bad condition that a local shop owner had donated three mannequins after he sold his shop with the hope that they would replace the three wise men. But Father Margoles didn’t use them. He clothed them with powder blue choir robes and cheap sunglasses and put them in his office. Joseph meanwhile stood, looking down as well, too proud to smile, a strong grip on his bent plaster crosier. The wise men held their gifts in their hands and the animals looked pleased as though they would never suffer slaughter, or as though they would never bear an unnecessarily heavy load, to ruin in a life of servitude. An incarnate promise had been delivered and all received the gift in perpetuity.

From the balcony it was a beautiful view. So beautiful I thought nothing of my ability to think in the manner I thought. From the floor, the pulpit interfered so I felt fortunate I was not a mouse. I looked on. Rows of candles flickered in tall slender glass vases by the altar. The last of the worshippers from the 11 o’clock mass were gone and the candles were yet to be extinguished. It was the perfect time to witness. To know peace. I wondered what it would have been like if Mary had been a twenty-first century creature and claimed to have immaculately conceived. Child services would have her and her father buccal swabbed and their DNA tested immediately. Rape kits, et cetera and so forth. Maury Povich, possibly. Interrogations by a sympathetic female detective who inevitably turns into a Rottweiler when the sympathy piece doesn’t work. A consultation with Planned Parenthood to abort the messiah. Charts and assurances of a fresh start. Pamphlets. Anti-psychotic medications for the voices. Directly beneath me, a boy wiped down the pews in the nave with a lemon-oil cloth, taking his time with a fat hand, as his father told him to do. His father was a brother of Father Margoles. Father Margoles sat in a back office and counted money from a stack of collection plates. He was no good at counting money but he had sent the secretary home who was usually responsible for such so she could sleep and then play Santa Claus when her children woke. She was a single mother named. Father Margoles had bad eyes and the light in his office was hardly sufficient. In the morning he would go to the market and buy the preparations for a vegetarian meal to be served at noon. All are welcome in the church’s refectory and likely, if last year was an indication, there would be over a thousand guests, most of whom were homeless or otherwise plighted. He hoped to have enough for dessert but this was a poor church and he needed enough to pay the light bill. In the plates was mostly change or shriveled dollar bills. A few donation envelopes were empty. A few more were stuffed with promissory notes and apologies that made Father Margoles smile. He pushed his tongue to the gap in his teeth.

“They needn’t apologize, Father” he said to a ceramic Jesus bobble-head on his desk. The letters were heartbreaking. “…hopefully by Easter our luck will change.” The largest sum was a check for $100 from a sweet Mrs. Mendoza who probably lived off mustard sandwiches and canned beans. He would send it back to her in the form of an anonymous cashier’s check with a note that said “bank error in your favor.” She would never receive it otherwise. Soft Christmas music played in the background. Those mannequins sung melodically through tight plastic lips and wide open eyes that never blinked.  

He was at $66.73 when startled by a crash. “Eduardo,” he called. He took off his spectacles, gently setting them down, and hurried out into the transept, hindered by the pain of arthritis, merciless against the holy man of 73 who was once so agile to play professional baseball in the Dominican. He found young Eduardo on his backside in the sanctuary near the nativity. The child was trying to get up but couldn’t for his nerves were shattered and his body weight lay upon him like an elephant. Joseph lay on his side, the crash of which presumably having caused the noise Father Margoles heard. His had been decapitated by the fall (the head was repaired from a previous decapitation in 1987 and glued on). “Eduardo, what happened?” No reply. “Qué ha pasado, Eduardo?!”

The chubby boy, still on his backside, looked at Father Margoles and pointed towards the wooden manger without saying a word, an abnormal look of panic upon his face. Father Margoles prepared to encounter the notorious St. Dismas ghost whose soul he had unsuccessfully exorcised from the church long ago before finally determining that the jolly spirit simply wanted to remain. The spirit was notorious for mischief. Though nothing nefarious, simple pranks and such like knocking things over, or splashing in holy water. They called him Charlie. Charlie took another bath, they’d say. Or Charlie knocked over the collection plates again. Tales of Charlie frightened the bejesus out of altar boys for generations and were often enthusiastically exaggerated, as to be expected. But as Father Margoles crept closer he didn’t see a ghost in the light. He heard a soft cry and looked down and saw in the manger there lay a baby. He had expected to see a baby. The same baby Jesus statue with his arms outspread that had been there every Christmas season for his thirty seven years and forty more before that. But not a child in a red towel wriggling in the warmth of the light. A living child that I saw for myself with the same astonishment as the Father and the boy.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Father Margoles. “Eduardo, go and call the ambulance. Ambulancia!” Eduardo got to his feet and scurried off. His sneakers squeaked on the hardwood. He was hopelessly clumsy and fell down the steps, quickly shouting back, “Estoy bien!” before continuing his mission. Father Margoles regarded the child who looked up into the light. He was less than a day old, he could tell. The umbilical cord was still partially attached. His skin was red and his eyes were weak and slate gray. He took the baby into his arms and smiled. His head was soft and warm with thin silken dark hair, soft in swooping curls that looked imprinted on his head. A feeling of warmth overcame him. “Tienes bonitos ojos,” Father Margoles whispered. Then again.

He looked out into the empty nave and smiled, looked up to the light and smiled. He looked at the wise men, and the donkey, and the cow, and the ox and smiled. He looked at Mother Mary’s blistery face and smiled. “Qué niño es este?” he repeated it in song. And he could hear the choir sing with him and he asked Mary’s pardon and swayed about the stage singing beautifully in his native tongue beneath the golden light. It had been a long time since he sang and no one but Charlie, myself and the child were there to hear him. And Charlie wept from the rafters, or maybe it was only melted snow through a leaky ceiling in desperate need of repair. A song of hollow drops sung in a bucket. A chorus of drips that stopped, suddenly, just as the pain of his arthritis left him. The ceiling repaired itself. He stood there holding the child who looked up at him with those slate gray eyes. Father Margoles was no longer hunched over. And the mannequins from his office walked out of his office and sat in the pew and smiled, waiting with wide open eyes and fake eyelashes. And he looked at them as though he had expected them to come and smiled welcoming them. And Eduardo sat with them, peacefully as though it was normal. And the dollars in the plates multiplied twenty fold and counted themselves, forming a neat pile, a pencil writing on the ledger 2400 dollars and zero cents. And Joseph’s plaster head rolled to his feet and up his body and attached itself. His body whole again, repaired. Mary’s face restored, pieces of broken and peeled paint fell revealing a new face, her original face which Father Margoles remembered as a younger man thirty some years prior. The child looked at Father Margoles’ face and was at peace. And Father Margoles was at peace looking at the child. At the star, the light of life. And Christ, he knew, had returned to Earth.

          And a mannequin said to Eduardo. “Had he been given to another church, they would have refused him just as they shunned his mother who gave him to this church for she knew in her heart this was the only place for him.” And yet another unflinching mannequin who once modeled bras and panties in women’s lingerie said, “This is the way of our Lord. This is what he chooses. Mercy not slaughter. Peace not war. To animate the inanimate. Humility not profit. We do not turn our backs on refugees or the homeless. We honor them for God’s glory and not our own. Let the other churches have their money and prestige.” And the third mannequin continued, “We will have peace and we have the Lord.”

          And Father Margoles replied, “Amen.” And I, a simple pigeon, remained perched in my nest with no intention ever to leave, content in the luxury of thought and in the light of the Father.